Snapshots of Sherlock
by Pickwick12
Summary: A series of drabbles based on the songs that come up in my iTunes shuffle. May continue indefinitely. Non-slash. Fans of "The Science of Friendship" may enjoy this as well.  Rated T to be safe, drug use mentioned
1. They All Fall Down

**This is a game my friend told me about.**

**To play, you turn on whatever computer music player you use and put it on Shuffle.**

**Choose your fandom.**

**Write a drabble related to each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish the drabble; you start when the song starts and stop when it's over. No going back to change things (except typos and such, of course) or add new sentences on, once the song is done.**

**For each one I'll put the title of the song, who recorded it, and the length of the song.**

_They All Fall Down_ by Grits 5:23

Everybody dies. He's seen men die and women die and children die, falling in showers of bombs he is powerless to stop. He was nothing but a bandage on a mortal hemorrhage, a single man against a deluge of death. Today, though, he can stop it. Today he can change the tide. Today he will stand against the deluge of nerves and fear. This time, he's alone on the battlefield, and the choice is his alone. Today, John Watson will not shoot to kill. He will shoot to save. Today, he will change it all. Today, Sherlock will live.


	2. Overture to Armide

_Overture to Armide_ 2:28

Sherlock hates official buildings, with their stark white corridors and people who know exactly where they mean to go and what they mean to do. Drones, he tells himself, but he can't shake the feeling that they hate him. Hating him is what people do, because he can see their secrets in their clothes and the wrinkles in their faces and their hands. He doesn't mind. Of course he doesn't. He's cleverer than all of them, and he doesn't care. They don't matter. But still, he hates official buildings.


	3. The Last Night

_The Last Night _by Skillet 3:30

Images, flashes, gunshots. His mind is a battlefield. "Medic! Medic!" "Get down, Sir!"

In the morning, he fingers his revolver, cold and comforting. It is his only friend. If they took it from him, he would have nothing. His therapist can never know. It's the only thing that lets him sleep at night, knowing it's there. What if—what if something could take its place some day? What if he didn't need it? He shakes his head. He's got to talk to Mike Stamford now, not imagine the impossible.


	4. Fill This Night

_Fill This Night_ by Alex Chu 4:18

It's been a long time since Sherlock had fun. It's not the same to be brilliant when no one's paying attention. Lestrade paid a certain kind of attention, of course, but it wasn't the same. John is sounding-board that speaks, a sounding-board that likes what it hears. Sometimes, he's even a sounding board that says something back that's funny or interesting or surprising. Truth is, Sherlock likes being called an idiot. He likes the way John says it, anyway, like a brother. Not like Mycroft. Like a real brother who doesn't hate you because you do something different than people expect. Being an idiot, Sherlock is realizing, can be fun. And he likes fun. He forgot he liked it, but now he can't seem to be without it.


	5. Cobrastyle

_Cobrastyle _by the Teddybears 2:59

They're going hunting. They're going hunting in the wild jungles of London for a man too tall to go unnoticed. He's crept through jungles before, but those were jungles of trees and lichen and animals that showed teeth when angry. Well, they might see some teeth tonight, but they would be of a much more decidedly human character. What would they do when they found him? They would track him and capture him, somehow they would do it. John wasn't exactly sure how, but he trusted Sherlock. Sherlock was no superman, but he had the nose of a tracker. Hadn't John said before that he looked like a bloodhound? Never more so than tonight, creeping through the concrete jungle of the seediest part of London. John thought he hated jungles, but it's all different when you're hunting with a friend, and that's just what he's doing.


	6. Say Yes

_Say Yes _by T-Max from the _Boys Over Flowers _soundtrack 3:28

Yes. All he had to get was a yes. He would act like it was a given. That would be best. That way, maybe the other man, the brave one with the psychosomatic limp, wouldn't realize he had a chance to say no. Maybe he would just nod and move in. But Sherlock was afraid he wouldn't. He looked too cynical for that. He looked like he would know. And Sherlock didn't want him to say no. Why couldn't people see when things were meant to be? But this man couldn't see. Not yet. What if he said no before he had a chance to see?


	7. Fruit Machine

_Fruit Machine _by The Ting Tings 2:52

John is so angry he can hardly see. Life and death. His whole existence has turned on life and death, watching death take life and trying to prevent it. Now, here he is, opposite a man who holds life and death in his hands and treats them like balls to juggle, doing with them what he pleases. He can't watch the cold, impassive face any longer, or he might attack him. That would be all right, except Sherlock would probably win, and that would make him even more angry.


	8. Gone Fishin'

_Gone Fishin' _by Stellar Kart 2:44

Mike Stamford knows two impossible people. A consulting detective who can't get on with anyone and a wounded army doctor with a chip on his shoulder. Two impossible people who need a flatmate. Mike Stamford can fix this. He knows he can. They call him an incurable optimist, his wife and his friends and his boss, but this time he has a hunch he's right. Two impossible people can make one friendship possible, can't they? Mike's willing to take a gamble on it and find out. What does it matter if two impossible people end up hating him?


	9. Enchanted

_Enchanted _by Taylor Swift 5:52

It doesn't matter that he's unemployed. It doesn't matter that he has a therapist or that he's recovering from trauma. None of that matters to me. When I look at him, I see someone I can love. I see someone who won't push me to be something I'm not, who won't force me to go further with him than I want to go, who won't be angry when I'm out of sorts. I see someone who matches, someone who fits. He won't want me to be the princess I've never been. He won't mind that I can't cook or that my hands are more comfortable with a scalpel than a spatula. He won't mind that I usually smell like alcohol wash instead of perfume. He won't mind that I make more money than most men, that I'm not used to dating, that I'm not helpless. He will take me the way I am. I can see it in his eyes. So I say yes. I'll hire you. I'll hire you forever. Please don't leave me. Don't look at me and see someone who will mind your scars or your limp or your height. See someone you can love, John Watson. See me and stay forever. Please.


	10. Lose My Soul

_Lose My Soul _by TobyMac 6:16

Sherlock isn't sure why he does it. He just does it because he can't not do it. When he tried not to do it, he was rubbish. He did drugs. He smoked all day long. And he liked it. But it just made him dull, lifeless, like a chemical lobotomy. This is different. He likes this, and it makes him sharper. Each case, like a whetstone, makes his mind into a finer and finer tool. He has heard people talk about purpose and destiny before, and he has no idea what they meant. He has never felt called to anything. This is about cravings, like hunger or thirst or addiction. He must do it, or he will not be able to live. He knows nothing whatsoever about passion. He only knows of necessity. Of having to do something. Stopping would be like ceasing to exist. It would be a return to that time before he was human, wasting away with a needle in his arm. It would be madness, and he will not return there again.


	11. A Song Calling for You

_A Song Calling for You _by SS501 5:23

_Nothing happens to me_. Can he really have said that to her? She looks at the man sitting in front of her, and she can hardly believe he's the same person. This is a man with purpose in his step, a step without a limp. He's a man with calm in his eyes, satisfaction, peace. He says he sleeps well, and she believes him. She wants to know why, but she doesn't pry. He's a man who tells when he's ready, not before. Maybe it's his job. He's a doctor working at a clinic, after. Maybe it's that. Or his girlfriend, his boss. It could be her. He even has a flatmate now, an eccentric man who solves crimes, if her patient's blog is honest. If it isn't, she hardly cares. John is invested in it, and that's what matters. Maybe he could become a bestselling fiction writer. Whatever's going on, her patient is better. She's done her job.


	12. I Need a Girl

_I Need a Girl _by Taeyang 3:42

_John_

He never planned to marry. He was too busy getting deployed and coming home and trying to get to know everyone all over again. He dated a few times, but nothing serious. Could he think differently now? He thought he might.

_Lestrade _

Eight years last fall. Eight years of coming home to hot dinners at all hours of the night, waking up to kisses and hugs, having the tension massaged out of his neck by kind fingers. He was sure lucky, and he knew it.

_Sherlock_

He wondered what the point was. Romance didn't do anything for the intellect. Quite the opposite. Women were impossible to understand, with twisty motivations. Who wanted one?


	13. Stars

_Stars _by Allison Krauss 2:56

Sometimes he wondered why Sherlock put up with him. Everybody saw what he put up with, the fits of temper and odd habits and arrogance. But he saw the other things, too. He saw the times he couldn't be enough, couldn't match the pace of Sherlock's brain and be the help he knew his friend needed. He saw the bills Sherlock paid without saying anything, the loans Sherlock wouldn't ever ask about or accept payment for. And he wondered what it was that made Sherlock keep choosing him, keep being his friend. He couldn't understand.


	14. Saving Buckbeak

_Saving Buckbeak _from the soundtrack of _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban _6:39

Solving crimes isn't usually exciting. Usually, it's plodding along, finding a clue here, following a red herring to its end there. He didn't mind that. He liked a measure of routine. He was good at routine. Of course, routine was nothing to the thrill that coursed through his veins when something really exciting came along. The problem was, exciting was usually beyond him. As a young man, he had tried. He had really tried to be one of those creative, brilliant detectives who stuns the world with his impossible solutions, but he couldn't ever quite make it work. He was too good at the everyday. That was all right, to a point. It had gotten him his job, his deserved acclaim. But then along came a man who could do it. A young, sharp, brittle man with the ravages of recent drug use still working their way out of him. And Lestrade had a choice. Part of him felt the draw toward jealousy, toward resentment of what he had always wanted and never had. But the stronger part of Lestrade had never been jealous. It had always been kind. So he adopted him, the gawky boy with the long limbs and fire-eaten eyes. He couldn't make him a great man—nature had already done that without him. But he could make him a good man. And he would. As long as it took.


	15. Movin'

_Movin'_ by Group 1 Crew 3:30

She danced. Nobody knew it, but she did. Zumba, Jazz, ballet, modern. She loved the feeling of letting go, letting her body be free. She made it through many days at the stark, white, sterile morgue by thinking about her evenings in the studio, twirling, jumping, moving to a beat, following no one but herself. She wondered what Jim would think, what Sherlock would think. But she would never tell them. Dancing was the one thing that was hers.


	16. El Burro

_El Burro _by Mariachi Cobre 2:10

Hand-to-hand combat is a bit like dancing. You learn the moves, and then you combine them in different ways to practice, and then, when it's time, you try your best to be fast enough not to fall. Sherlock had fallen a lot of times, both as a child in dance class and an adult studying martial arts. But he had gotten up. Because he was Sherlock, and he wouldn't fail, no matter what. If you knocked him down, you could be sure he would fight you again. And again.


	17. Monster

_Monster _by Super Junior 3:48

The weird Irish kid in the all-English school. The one who wasn't athletic, who got the best grades. He hated them all, and they hated him. He never thought of them as individual people; they were always a group, a group of hostile eyes, almost like a pack of wolves waiting to pounce. He had been afraid at first, terrified. He had tried to run. But they brought him back, of course. Brought him back and made him stay. And after a while, he was the predator instead of the prey. He got smarter than all of them, the whole group of them. All their brains put together couldn't equal his. He made their lives miserable, starting with the ones he hated most. But he didn't kill them. He was smart enough to realize he couldn't manage it yet. He would, though. He would bide his time and kill one of them—which one? He made a list. Carl Powers.


	18. Shine

_Shine _by the Newsboys 3:44

The first time was when they had run the streets of London together. Pointlessly. Looking in the wrong places for the wrong man. But it didn't matter. Something had changed, shifted in both of them. They had laughed together, at one another, at themselves. They had shared a meal—well, John had eaten while Sherlock stared, not that that would prove to be unusual. Sherlock had experienced the frustration of failure and found that he wasn't alone in it, and John had realized that someone actually needed him around for once, someone who wasn't yelling for medical attention or barking out military orders. Sherlock realized then that he might like having a friend, and John realized he might like being a civilian.


	19. Ignition

_Ignition _by TobyMac 3:53

He answers the phone, and his pulse begins to race. Suddenly, the thick, sluggish boredom that has clouded his mind for days is completely gone. He listens, alert, trying to find every truth in every word the voice on the other line says. Tricky. Insufficient evidence. But he will find more. He will see what no one sees, like he always does. With one motion, he grasps his coat and throws it over him, unconscious of the fact that he looks as high as a kite, as keyed up as someone who's just taken a hit of stimulant. He is far from scattered, though. He is hyper-focused, thinking through every move he will make when he reaches the house where the body lies, everything he will look for, all the clues he will seek. He is happier than he has been in ages. He looks over and wonders if he should ask John to come along. Would the doctor say yes?


	20. My Father's Father

_My Father's Father_ by The Civil Wars 3:39

Mrs. Hudson is different from anyone else Sherlock knows. She doesn't mind being old, doesn't fear the death that creeps ever closer. She's at peace, at rest. He doesn't understand. Even John can't lay claim to such internal equilibrium. Sherlock isn't used to equilibrium. He's used to the rush and the fall, the fill up and the empty. Maybe that's why he can't ignore the little woman with the old-fashioned sweaters. She's never empty, never stuffed, always exactly the right pitch.


	21. Instrumental Violin

Instrumental Violin from the Boys Over Flowers Soundtrack 2:04

Sherlock's best days are when a case is breaking, when he can eat again because he knows he's close. It's that sweet spot when the ball glances off the bat and swoops off to be a home run. After you round the bases, it's boring again, and depression sets in, but as the ball heads over the fence, the euphoria is perfect. It's that time all the clues come together, and he feels like a preteen again, like Encyclopedia Brown. And all is right with the world. He might even get the groceries this time.


	22. High Times, Hard Times

_High Times, Hard Times _from the _Newsies _soundtrack 2:54

He loves London. Not the architecture or the ambiance or all the things tourists wax poetic about in their blogs. No, he loves the unseen London, the real London made up of invisible strings that connect all sorts of unlikely people. The networks, both law-enforcement and criminal. He looks at the map, and he doesn't see landmarks. He sees webs, and at the middle of these webs he sees people: Moriarty, Mycroft. Spiders with webs of crime and webs of enforcement. Is there really a great difference between them? Sherlock isn't always sure. A spider is a spider and a web is a web.


	23. Before the Parade Passes By

_Before the Parade Passes By _from the _Hello, Dolly _soundtrack 4:54

He moved back to London. He didn't know what else to do. Harry is here, not that he ever sees her, but she's the only thing he has left. He does all the correct things, looks for work, goes to his therapy appointments. But when he goes home at night, he knows the rent is coming due, and he won't be able to pay. It's as if the whole of London is passing him by, with purpose and drive, and he has nothing. He was a good soldier, a brave soldier, a soldier who is owed the lives of many other soldiers who would have died if he hadn't done his job no matter how many bullets were peppering the sky. But none of that seems to matter now. He's the one who's been left behind. Can a person be a hero if no one is there to care? John thinks not. So he waits, his liminality like a fog around him. He needs something to happen, something new, something that will reawaken him to life. He doesn't know what it is, doesn't even know if it exists, but he's desperate to find it. If he doesn't, he's not sure what he'll do. He can't watch the parade go by any longer without losing his mind. That's why he puts on his jacket and goes to look at a flat. That's why he doesn't say no. That's why he gives it a try.


	24. Bari Improv

_Bari Improv _from the _August Rush _soundtrack 1:36

Sherlock hasn't ever known another person who laughs like John. Who else would joke about stealing an ashtray from Buckingham Palace? Sherlock's childhood was filled with cold looks and tension and parents and a brother who were unhappy. But John is a brother of a different sort. John is fun.


	25. Blue Flower

_Blue Flower _from the _Boys Over Flowers _soundtrack 1:46

Molly gets ready for the Christmas party with a smile on her face. Tonight she's going to do it. She's going to give Sherlock a gift he'll really like—a set of beakers made out of a new kind of shatter-proof glass. Who cares if no one else understands? He's a detective; she works at a morgue. They're not exactly average.

She puts on her best dress—the one her friends call her a knockout in—and heads over.


	26. According to You

_According to You _by Orianthi 3:20

Mycroft can't understand it. He's a capable man—a hilarious understatement, really. He has the life he enjoys, the position he wants, the power he needs. But there's still that one small problem he can't solve. That one small, giant problem named Sherlock. A little brother can't be put away in a box like a receipt you're finished tallying. He can't be put to rights in one day or figured out like a cipher. A brother is more than that, but Mycroft isn't exactly sure what. That's what makes it so hard. The one thing he can't understand. The thing named Sherlock.


	27. Rainism

_Rainism _by Rain 3:36

Seb Moran loads his gun. The boss may be gone, but that doesn't mean he has to fold. He's paid out through the year—several years, if he's honest. Moriarty wasn't short on pay. The thing is, Seb is more than a flunky with a menial job. He's a True Believer. He knows the faces—all the faces that belong to the people Holmes cared about. They're burned in his memory as if by fire. He won't take them down directly. No, it'll be more subtle than that. He will take his cue from his boss, the dearly departed. But soon, he will make it known that he's still alive, still around. Just because they've killed the spider doesn't mean his web is gone. He could not protect his boss, but he will avenge him. No question.


	28. Hit Me

_Hit Me _by ShiNee 3:55

Molly

She'd thought it would be enough to go on, being the one person who knows, the one person he trusted enough to tell. But knowing isn't a substitute for seeing his thin face and making him a cup of coffee in the middle of the night. It's something, but it's not as much as she expected.

Lestrade

Sherlock wasn't his son. He wasn't even his friend, not in any normal way that anyone thinks of the word. But the inspector feels like he's lost both—a son and a friend. He puts the guilt away, the way he does when he loses officers in the field. But he still grieves.

Mycroft

He knows. Of course he knows. They never talked about it. Sherlock simply trusted that he would see beyond the surface, and he did. That's how he knows there's a little brother in a flat somewhere, and it comforts him. Sometimes, at night, he lets himself imagine that Sherlock is free, and he's glad. It's a sentiment that is unlike him, but he feels it all the same.


	29. Where the Blacktop Ends

_Where the Blacktop Ends _by Keith Urban 3:00

When John Watson came home to London, he thought his days of adventure were over. That was a good thing, right? No more danger. No more shooting. No more peril. But—but—well, it turned out, London was as much of a jungle as anywhere else. He just needed the right tour guide to see it.

The right tour guide. Sherlock was a lot of things, but nothing you could say about him was more accurate than that. He was like a hunter on safari. At first, John had resisted—for about five minutes.

The truth was, the tiny doctor liked his adventure as much as he liked his tea. Nothing wrong with that.


	30. The Forbidden Pool

_The Forbidden Pool _from the LOTR Soundtrack 5:27

Dark days.

His days were dark before he met Sherlock. Days when he wasn't sure if he wanted to live or die, when his revolver was his best and only friend. Days when his blog was a blank, white screen. Scarier than it sounds. Nothing happened to him.

Dark days again.

Loss is something he knows well. He has lost men and women and seen innocent children die from bombs that were never meant for them. But this is different. There is a bittersweetness now. At first, he thought it was all bitter, as his mind replayed over and over the sight of his friend plummeting to his death. Like bitter water, his dreams were a deluge of sadness.

But there is sweetness now, when he gets up every morning and knows that he wants to live. He is not the man he was before. The memory of a friend is far, far better than having no friend at all. In him, there is the same John Watson, but there is also something new, the him that emerged because of the man who chose to be his friend.

Sometimes he wants to think it's all bitter, so he can shake his fist at the universe. But it's so much more than that. He cannot help being thankful that he will never be the same, and that makes the grieving just a little bit sweet.


End file.
